John W. Dower, "Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II," (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000)

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the 1999 National Book Award for Nonfiction, finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize and the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize, Embracing Defeat is John W. Dower's brilliant examination of Japan in the immediate, shattering aftermath of World War II.Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources and illustrated with dozens of astonishing documentary photographs, Embracing Defeat is the fullest and most important history of the more than six years of American occupation, which affected every level of Japanese society, often in ways neither side could anticipate. Dower, whom Stephen E. Ambrose has called "America's foremost historian of the Second World War in the Pacific," gives us the rich and turbulent interplay between West and East, the victor and the vanquished, in a way never before attempted, from top-level manipulations concerning the fate of Emperor Hirohito to the hopes and fears of men and women in every walk of life. Already regarded as the benchmark in its field, Embracing Defeat is a work of colossal scholarship and history of the very first order. John W. Dower is the Elting E. Morison Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for War Without Mercy. 75 illustrations and map Embracing Defeat by John W. Dower Japan After World War II History American Occupation of Japan 1945-1952 Post-War Japan Reconstruction Pulitzer Prize Winner Embracing Defeat Japanese Society After WWII U.S.-Japan Relations Post-War Emperor Hirohito's Fate After WWII Japanese Cultural Transformation National Book Award for Nonfiction 1999 Impact of American Occupation on Japan John W. Dower, WWII Pacific Historian East-West Interplay Post-WWII Japan Documentary Photographs of Occupied Japan Japan's Post-War Political and Social Changes